"Liaisons will ensure that the voices and perspectives of these communities are heard and considered in the Movement Strategy Process"
Question 1: Was there not feedback last year from volunteer coordinators (or whatever the title was) that their voices were lost, and that their time felt wasted; how was that fixed?
Question 2: Exactly how are paid liaisons empowered or authorised to "ensure" that community feedback is heard, or will be able to measure their impact on the huge, expensive and politically sensitive WMF strategy process?
By the way, I know that the pitch is that this is a "movement" strategy, but clearly when the top level goals are express in language like: "To serve our users, we will become a platform that serves open knowledge to the world across interfaces and communities. We will build tools for allies and partners to organize and exchange free knowledge beyond Wikimedia. Our infrastructure will enable us and others to collect and use different forms of free, trusted knowledge." This has nothing to do with unpaid volunteers like me, as my real experience over several years is that I have no voice whatsoever to actually influence any of this WMF employee controlled 'infrastructure', 'platforms' or who the WMF chooses as 'partners', even though I have invested months of my time in the development of GLAM related tools, none was ever recognised or later maintained by the WMF. I recall personal discussions and phone conferences where WMF management were positively rude about any prospect of WMF dev time being involved in non-WMF employee originating projects, and though tone may be nicer, the outcomes are the same.
For these reasons I have positively avoided using up my valuable volunteer time over the last couple of years in any of these WMF strategy discussions, it would be jolly nice to be provided with evidence that things are different in 2019, and it would be worth me reconsidering my views and try to engage with whoever becomes a paid WMF liaison when they appear on Commons, rather than ignoring them, their surveys, or their email offers for interviews.
Thanks in advance, Fae (Commons volunteer)
On Mon, 7 Jan 2019 at 15:01, Kaarel Vaidla kvaidla@wikimedia.org wrote:
Dear fellow Wikimedians,
We are happy to announce our plans to engage Wikimedia communities in the strategic and structural reform discussions of our global movement. The Movement Strategy Process requires input and participation from all of our communities and we are looking for Liaisons for the Movement Strategy Process to engage with some language communities and facilitate their participation in global strategic discussions. Liaisons will ensure that the voices and perspectives of these communities are heard and considered in the Movement Strategy Process and that members of these communities actively engage and participate in the discussions in their own language.
Based on criteria of reach of the language, projects, as well as existing editor base, the Core Team has identified the following language communities for further engagement and will be hiring a Strategy Liaisons for each:[1]: Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
The Liaisons are expected to: engage with the communities in their native language; coordinate and facilitate discussions; support healthy communication; provide details and context when needed, and monitor different communication channels of the communities to surface ideas related to the Strategy Process. Liaisons will be expected to identify opportunities where the ongoing Movement Strategy Process discussions can benefit and solicit ideas from interested community members. Liaisons will also be expected to summarize the most important discussion points, coordinate translations of these summaries to share them with Liaisons Coordinator, Working Groups and wider global community.
Ideal candidates will have a good connection with the local communities, strong communication skills, fluency in English and one of the nine identified community languages as well as organizational and collaborative skills.
The Liaisons positions will be part time (up to 20 h/week) and will be in place from February to December 2019. If you are interested in the role or would like to have more information, you can find the full description of the role on respective application page https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/1478679?gh_src=2a6a8b121 [2].
Please note that we are also recruiting for a full-time Liaisons Coordinator to ensure engagement of the communities in the Movemement Strategy Process and manage the worknd fuddy-duddy of the Strategy Liaisons. You can find the full description of this role on respective application page https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/1460548?gh_src=abf396081 [3]. nd fuddy-duddy We look forward to collaborating with many of you in the upcoming year and working with the Strategy Liaisons to engage our communities in the Movement Strategy Process. If you have any questions or specifications regarding the role, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Project Manager Jodi McMurray ( jmcmurray{{at}}wikimedia.org ).
With all the best wishes,
Kaarel and the Core Team
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Particip...
[2] https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/1478679?gh_src=2a6a8b121
[3] https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimedia/jobs/1460548?gh_src=abf396081
*Kaarel Vaidla* Process Architect for Wikimedia Movement Strategy 2030.wikimedia.org